Spider-Man has joined the Marvel Cinematic Universe owned by Disney, but various supporting characters from the Spider-Man comics are still a part of the co-called Sony Spider-Man Universe. What this confusing state of affairs means is that Sony films such as Venom and Morbius can have Spider-Man-ish superheroes and supervillains in them, but they don’t feature Spidey himself. Later this year, two more SSU films are due to be released, Venom 3 and Kraven the Hunter. In the meantime, Madame Web stars Dakota Johnson as the conveniently named Cassandra Webb, a New York paramedic who acquires the ability to see the future. This puts her at odds with a Spider-Man-ish baddie (Tahar Rahim) who is trying to kill three Spider-Man-ish women (Sydney Sweeney, Celeste O’Connor and Isabela Merced). Let’s hope the film is more successful than the first trailer, which became notorious for one clunky line of dialogue: “He was in the Amazon with my mum when she was researching spiders, right before she died.”
On general release from 14 February
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